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anyone care to settle an argument between me and my friends? will caps or stems make you trip harder (if there is any difference at all.) also, one of my friends insists that caps give you a more visual high and stems give a stronger body high. thanks for your help.

you do eat both, but it does matter because someone is curious about it. I would be interested in knowing this as well for purely discussion reasons and I think the person who posted the question is as well.

besides, I don't think we are looking for "arguments" but some sort of scientific evidence. Like I trust the trip report of anyone anyways...

--------------------All of my posts are for discussion purposes only. All posts concerning cultivation of mushrooms refer to legal gourmet mushrooms only. Yes, I support monkey-human relationships.

I saw a very interesting post awhile back at the Nook, it showed a analysis of shrooms tested, caps vs. stems, upon several different flushes, I beleive over a four flush period.

Turned out that caps as a general rule had higher levels of Psilocybin, where as stems had higher levels of psilocin. But as a general rule it was not that much varience. Ill look for the post but the outcome was that it really didnt matter and there was no official determination. Eat both caps and stems and your covered :P

Analysis of Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer) grown in controlled culture showed that the level of psilocin was generally zero in the first (or sometimes even the second) fruiting of the mushroom from a given culture and that the level reached a maximum by the fourth flush. The level of psilocybin, which was nearly always at least twice the level of psilocin, showed no upward or downward trend as fruiting progressed, but was variable over a factor of four. Samples obtained from outside sources had psilocybin levels varying by over a factor of ten form one collection to the next.

Introduction

When undertaking quantitative analysis of psilocybin and psilocin levels in the Pacific Northwest species, we generally found large variations from one collection to another even within one species and even when all collections were made from a single location (Beug and Bigwood, 1982). In investigating biosynthetic pathways in the formation of psilocin and psilocybin in Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer, we also observed variations in psilocybin and psilocin levels from one fruiting to the next (Chilton, 1979). WE therefore stet out to grow a selected Amazonian strain of Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer in carefully controlled cultures and study the variations of psilocybin and psilocin levels with time. We also report here on the observed variation of psilocybin and psilocin levels with repeatted flushes from a single culture and the variation observed in other strains.

Experimental

The strain of Psilocybe cubensis cultivated in this study originated from a spore print taken in the Amazon basin near Pucalpa, Peru (Repke et al., 1977). Mycelium obtained from the spore print was kept as a stock culture on various agars. Since only one flush (fruiting) could be obtained from agar plates, we used a rye-grain medium, described initially in San Antonio (1971), refined by Oss and Oeric (1976), and adapted to "miniculture" by us. A wide-mouth half-pint jar (~250 ml) was charge with 10 g of rye grain and 15 ml of water and autoclaved. It was then inoculated under sterile conditions with a mycelium culture on agar. Every four days for a period of 28 days, weight per miniculture. Each flush was harvested as soon as the sporocarps were mature. The mushrooms ere the jars were shaken to distribute the growing mycelium evenly on the grain. In 28 days, the mycelium had covered the grain and the jars were then opened and the grain was cased (covered with a layer about 2 cm deep) with 2 parts peat : 1 part calcium carbonate : 2 parts perlite and/or vermiculite. The mushrooms were "watered" once every two days with 1 ml of sterile water via syringe. The first flyush (fruiting) occurred four to five weeks after inoculation (about two weeks after casing). The minicultures continued to produce mushrooms for at least 20 weeks provided they remained uncontaminated. They yielded an average of 2.7 g dry weight per miniculture. Each flush was harvested as soon as the sprocarps were mature. The mushrooms were immediately freeze-dried, sealed in plastic and stored at?5 degrees Celsius until analysis. Voucher specimens were prepared for deposit in the University of Washington Herbarium (WTU).

The extraction procedure and analysis was described in the previous paper. The reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatograms were quantified wioth a Hewlett-Packard 3380! Reporting integrator-plotter and calibrated against standards from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. We found a linear relationship (plus/minus 10% repeatability) between concentration and peak area from 0.2 to 3 micrograms total psilocybine or psilocin. The detection limit was about 0.01 micrograms psilocybin or psilocin. The HPLC results were qualitatively confirmed by TLC using butanol-acetic acid-water (12:3:5).

Results

We found that the levels of psilocybin varied somewhat unpredictably from one flush to the next, but generally were much the same on the last flush as they were on the first flush (Table 1). Psilocin, on the other hand, generally was absent in the first one or two flushes, each maximixed by the fourth flush, and then appeared to start to decline (Table 1). Unfortunately, we could generally not follow the decline appreciably since five flushes is normally the maximum we can get before the mycelium stops fruiting. (With miniculture 1, we obtained a sixth flush but the fifth flush was totally consumed in another experiment and is not reported here.)

In two other strains grown by other sources, we also observed nearly complete absence of psilocin in the first flush . In These, we analyzed the caps and stems separately and found that the caps generally contained twice as much psilocybin as the stems, but that the small amount of psilocin present was entirely in the stems (Table 2). In contrast, our Amazon strai hasd a trace of psiloin in the cap but not in the stem. The cap and stem contained equal amounts of psilocybin.

Finally, we analyzed five street samples of Psilocybe cubensis for which we did not know the flush number or the precise growing conditions (Table 3). We found highly variable levels of psilocybin and low levels of psilocin.

We found that the level of psilocybin and psilocin varies over a factor of four among various cultures of Psilocybe cubensis grown under rigidly controlled conditions, while specimens from outside sources varied tenfold. IT is clear that entheogenic (Ruck et al., 1979) and recreational users of this species have no way of predicting the amount of psilocybin and psilocin that they are ingesting with a given dry weight of the mushrooms. It thus seems likely that variations in the subjective experience will not only come from the effects of set and setting but will also stem in very real measure rom large dosage differences.

References

Beug, Michael W. and Jeremy Bigwood. 1982. Psilocybin and psilocin levels in twenty species from seven genera of wild mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A. Journal of Ethnopharmacology vol. 5:271-285.

The drug is the drug is the drug. Why would your friends think it makes a difference as to how hard you'll trip? Both cap and stems contain the drug. According to that wondeful report above, the drug varies in distribution throughout the fruit body. Just eat the shrooms and trip and worry about other things.

I don't understand how of all the questions that get asked on this forum, this is the one that people are like "why the fuck do you care?" Because we do, if for no other reason than to just know. Haven't you ever wanted to just _know_ something? I mean, would people have said "why the fuck do you care" if someone was asking what substrate to use? I mean, because you can just respond to that like "who cares, they all grows shrooms!" I do understand your point from one perspective, but I also hope that you understand mine.

--------------------All of my posts are for discussion purposes only. All posts concerning cultivation of mushrooms refer to legal gourmet mushrooms only. Yes, I support monkey-human relationships.

LOL.
Personally, my shrooms end up scrunched up to a powder. In that state there is no stem and cap, just powder.
However I suppose if you gotta know, you gotta know.
I also had seen a discussion about this in the archieves at nan's, and it wasn't as conclusive as the one above... basically one bloke says stems, another caps, and both said they'd read it somewhere (but not where).

P.S. I never swear lol

--------------------~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"They think we are retarded - they are retarded." - The Sultan of Spin.

Sorry if I seem like an ass a little bit but this question could of easily been answered with a search. I am a strong believer in the search function and I have noticed that newbs don't use it. They would rather ask a question. I don't why this is because you can get a much quicker answer by just typing it into the search engine. If you aren't good at searching you need to learn.

But from what I have picked up caps are slightly more potent. But there isn't that much of difference. In tests it goes back forth from the stems and caps having more potency. Caps tend to be more potent more often but again it isn't enough.

Quote:gce21 said:anyone care to settle an argument between me and my friends? will caps or stems make you trip harder (if there is any difference at all.) also, one of my friends insists that caps give you a more visual high and stems give a stronger body high. thanks for your help.

The caps are inherently more dense in mass but the corresponding stem probably has the same amount of Psilocybin / weight.

However, it really depends on the type of cubensis(more importantly the species of mushroom.)

Closed caps strains will be fairly even throughout because their caps don't open / bloom late.

Mushrooms will stop producing Psilocybin when the caps open.If are you growing open cap strains, it's very important to watch for this and pick the ones that open first. The stems tend to grow faster than the caps so this will cause a phenomenon that will cause stems to have a lower amount of Psilocybin per gram than the caps.

Shady (or just unaware) growers will try and get them to grow as big as possible causing the mushrooms to have a low potency per gram if they are growing open caps. (Ever got that reeeaaally big mushroom with an open cap that didn't seem to make you trip enough? Yeah.)

Quote:SheriffJoeArpaio said:The caps are inherently more dense in mass but the corresponding stem probably has the same amount of Psilocybin / weight.

However, it really depends on the type of cubensis(more importantly the species of mushroom.)

Closed caps strains will be fairly even throughout because their caps don't open / bloom late.

Mushrooms will stop producing Psilocybin when the caps open.If are you growing open cap strains, it's very important to watch for this and pick the ones that open first. The stems tend to grow faster than the caps so this will cause a phenomenon that will cause stems to have a lower amount of Psilocybin per gram than the caps.

Shady (or just unaware) growers will try and get them to grow as big as possible causing the mushrooms to have a low potency per gram if they are growing open caps. (Ever got that reeeaaally big mushroom with an open cap that didn't seem to make you trip enough? Yeah.)